Daily News about R-devel/CHANGES

2.14.0 NEW FEATURES (Windows)

The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed
from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text
(including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the
new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter.

‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows.

There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as
on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the
bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices
‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.

These are not compiled in by default: see the instructions in the ‘R
Installation and Administration Manual’.

All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument.
If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4.
If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are
used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based
devices.

This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or
one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’).
Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better
supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to
Chinese/Korean/Thai ....

There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).

This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether
anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings:
this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default
behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use
anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a
hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using
ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this
the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.

The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of
the bitmap devices.

‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when
it restores an earlier install of the package.

2.14.0 INSTALLATION (Windows)

There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or
‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in
‘MkRules.local’.

It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature
enough.

Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag
‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent
CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect
is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.

This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’
macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.

2.14.0 PACKAGE INSTALLATION (Windows)

‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not
include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.

CHANGES IN R-devel NEW FEATURES (Windows)

The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed
from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text
(including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the
new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter.

‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows.

There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as
on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the
bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices
‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.

These are not compiled in by default: see the instructions in the ‘R
Installation and Administration Manual’.

All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument.
If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4.
If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are
used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based
devices.

This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or
one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’).
Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better
supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to
Chinese/Korean/Thai ....

There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).

This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether
anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings:
this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default
behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use
anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a
hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using
ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this
the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.

The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of
the bitmap devices.

‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when
it restores an earlier install of the package.

CHANGES IN R-devel INSTALLATION (Windows)

There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or
‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in
‘MkRules.local’.

It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature
enough.

Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag
‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent
CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect
is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.

This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’
macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.

CHANGES IN R-devel PACKAGE INSTALLATION (Windows)

‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not
include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.